Tales of the Awoken
by 23luckyduck
Summary: A series of short stories I wrote about my character in destiny, a female Awoken.
1. Chapter 1

She couldn't remember her past life. She couldn't remember her parents, if she had any siblings, or even her birthday. Ghost knew. He saw her whole life when he first revived her. But she never listened. That life was a thing of the past.

She gave up on trying to learn about her life a long time ago. She had hardly had more than a few minutes to herself when she first became a guardian. At the time, she couldn't seem to accept that she had a whole life that she didn't know about, a family that no longer existed - but now had to fight day and night for a cause she hasn't signed up for. So she threw herself into the fight. She made herself indispensable. And along the way, the constant battles, and countless deaths made her realize that there wasn't any depth to her life anymore.

She was never hungry. She supposed the light that kept her alive took care of that. She didn't necessarily need sleep. It seemed that she never ran out of energy. She had become numb to death. She still felt pain, felt every bullet and punch as hard as the next, but preservation of life was a thing for the mortal. She was an empty shell. A deathless solider. Everyone spoke as if the light was a blessing. That guardians were the angels for humanity. But she was living a hell everyday, and in her darkest hours, she wondered if the light was actually "good" if it could put her through so much pain.

The scars accumulated on her body told many stories that had no audience. Every friend she tried to make seemed to die within the next few days, their ghost destroyed, no chance of revival. Sometimes it was intentional. She had seen too many hopeless guardians destroy their own ghosts before throwing themselves from the top of the tower. She had given up on trying to get to know others not long after she arrived. The Vanguard was the only constant. Until Cayde-6 died.

Fear was something that always brooded in the back of her head. Fear of death didn't exist. But the fear of not existing was very much present.

Although she never needed to sleep, she found herself constantly wandering back to her room in the tower to close her eyes for a few hours. She never felt more refreshed when she woke up. It just silenced the voices in her head.

Occasionally she get the notion that she's been somewhere before. Or that some locked memory in her head had been captured in that location. As hard as she tried she could never dig any deeper. She had learned to brush it off. Ignore any previous attachment she may have had, and focus on the mission at hand.

Regardless, it still bugged her.


	2. Chapter 2

The guardian typed in a code on the access panel which opened a door to a small room. With a sigh she examined the tarnished gauntlets in her hand with a scowl as she walked in. Hive blood was the hardest to clean. She tossed her bloodied armor onto a closed crate and collapsed on the makeshift bed in front of a large window with a view of the Last City and the traveler floating above it. She gazed at the floating orb and all the stars behind it - where she had just come from.

"I can't believe Zavala didn't even reward us. That captain has been bothering the Vanguard for weeks and when we finally finish him off we don't get more than a dismissal to wait for further orders." Ghost complained. The guardian looked over at her companion in sympathy. He complained too much. "You kill a few gods and everybody doesn't care when you take out the little guys." He mumbled, mostly to himself. Ghost flew over to one of the shelves where he had his own makeshift bed. The rest of the shelf was cluttered with fancy awards from all her missions. They didn't mean much to her.

Her room was small. She didn't have much, but what she did have was all that was left from when the tower was destroyed during the Red Legions attack on the Last City. It used to be a vault, but was repurposed for guardian quarters. Zavala had offered a much bigger room but she was content with this. Some guardians liked having large rooms where they could show off their armor and weapons, occasionally skulls from enemies they had defeated. She didn't have anybody to show off to, she was alone anyway. A bigger room wouldn't make her feel any less lonely.

She stretched out on her cot, feet brushing against the wall. She kept the majority of her armor in the fault, save for the pieces she wore on a daily basis. Apart from the awards, she did have a few personal items.

A flower a child had given to her during Cayde-6's funeral. Her very first helmet. A few books on awoken history. The few items that were found on her body when Ghost revived her, the only indicators of her past life. One of them was an ID. Ghost had insisted on calling her by her old name, but she refused to answer to it. She didn't have a name anymore. Eventually he stopped trying. She wasn't sure if she felt relieved or sad.

She stretched out her muscles, leaning back to hopefully get a few hours of sleep before Zavala called upon her again.

A bullet wound in her shoulder stung, slowly being repaired by the light in her close proximity to the traveler. Her leg held a dull ache, it had been broken when a knight knocked her down and stepped on it. She hadn't lasted much longer after that, and when she was revived it was healed but she knew from past experience that it would take days for the ache to go away. But none of this was new. She was always in constant pain, to the point where she had forgot what it felt like to not be hurting somewhere. Her heart was beating, but it felt empty. Her soul felt as if it was chained down. She wanted to relieve herself of this burden but she couldn't. She knew the weight on her shoulders was too heavy to throw off. This was not something she could run away from. She didn't have the heart to destroy Ghost to assure she couldn't be revived.

When Ghual kicked Ghost off that platform, and then sent her plummeting after him, that was the first time she thought she wouldn't wake up again. The grasp of death was a familiar feeling at this point, but it had never lingered. As she fell, unable to see Ghosts light below her, she wondered if she would finally feel the eternal embrace of death. If she had had much emotion left, she would have cried when she woke up a few days later. She had never been so happy to be alive.

Her eyes slipped closed as she tried to make herself more comfortable. It was at times like this when a few memories from a past life flickered through her mind. Her as a child running into her parents arms. Going to school. Playing with friends. She pushed it away. When she had first been revived, she clung to the memories, trying to keep the image stay for more than a few seconds. She never succeeded, they disappeared as soon as they came. She learned to stop chasing them. Wishing for her old life would accomplish nothing.

Every bullet fired, every enemy downed, accomplished something. At least that's what the Vanguard said. She no longer cared either way.


	3. Chapter 3

No one seemed to spare the newly crowned "Guardian" a glance as she followed the floating thing in front of her as she walked across the catwalk of a towering building above The Last City. After the speedy getaway from the Cosmodrome, the thing called "Ghost" briefly explained the situation. She was a couple hundred years in the future, a giant ball hovering above the earth had granted her fancy space powers, she now had to fight with said fancy space powers against evil aliens. Yeah, that just about covered it.

She was scared and lonely. She didn't even know what was going on before a gun was shoved in her hands and was promised an explanation later. She didn't know what to do with her life, seeing as though she remembered absolutely nothing. Not even her own name.

"Here we are, Cayde!" Ghost called out to a figure in front of her as they came to a stop. The figure turned and the Guardian was shocked to see glowing mechanical eyes staring back at her. A piece of recognition clicked in the back of her mind, emExo/em. The thought was gone as soon as it came, almost as if it was being suppressed. The figure's voice pulled her back into reality.

"Hey hey hey you finally found your Guardian huh?" His voice sounded like it had been recorded and then played back through a speaker. "And she's a hunter - I like you even more now." He tapped Ghost lightly with the wrench in his hand as he hopped down from where he was messing with the insides of what looked like a motorbike. She wordlessly watched him as he circled her, eyeing her up and down. "Well it's not the worst I've ever seen. She's got a decent amount of muscle on her." His eyes flipped up to hers, voice switching from its previous light tone to a more serious one. "Can you fire a gun?" She was about to open her mouth when Ghost answered for her.

"She already did, we got ambushed by fallen on our way out of the Cosmodrome." Cayde nodded as he looked her up and down again, noticing the stashed rifle on her back.

"Good, good," he muttered. Suddenly he clapped his hands. "Well let's get you out of those rags and into some newbie vanguard gear. I have a low light pulse rifle somewhere in my vault, I'll look for it later." He pointed at her. "Something tells me you'll be good at it."


	4. Chapter 4

"T-this isn't your fault…" Cayde's raspy voice echoed through the now empty prison floor. Only minutes before he had been fighting for his life. She should have been there.

She knew it wasn't her fault, but nothing could stop the guilt weighing her down more and more with every word Cayde forced out. She had never talked very much, but she could speak when needed. But when she needed her words most, they failed her. Her mouth was open but nothing was coming out. No reassurances, no promises of revenge, the only noise was the sickening echo of Cayde coughing.

When his eyes went dark, a part of her died with him. She was used to feeling empty. But this was different. She felt as lost as she was when she first arrived at the tower all those years ago. There was now a hole in her chest that no light could ever revive. Cayde was her mentor, her partner and her friend. And while he insisted it wasn't her fault, she should have been down there with him. Maybe she would have died instead, and the Vanguard would never know the pain of losing one of their leaders. Her hands floated above his limp body, unsure if she should back away and accept it or try to shake him to somehow bring him back. She heard footsteps - Petra's, she assumed - before they suddenly stopped.

"No…" Petra had said what the Guardian could not.

She vaguely noted Petra reestablishing a com link with the tower and informing them of Cayde's death. It felt wrong to hear it. She didn't want to hear that Cayde was dead. Ghost was speaking to her, but she couldn't understand it. At some point he gave up as she just stared at Cayde's lifeless body. She kept expecting him to sit up and say "surprise!" But his eyes were too dark to hold any hope for that.

Petra entered her vision to start to pick up Cayde but the Guardian held up a hand and finally spoke.

"I'll do it." The words felt like a betrayal. As he was slipping away she couldn't bring herself to speak, but now the words effortlessly flowed out. Petra backed off and the Guardian carefully slid her arms under Cayde's shoulders and knees. His head and arms limply dangled and rocked with each step she took. She fought hard to keep the nausea at bay as tears prickled her eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she had cried. It had been so long since any emotion of hers had come to the surface, she forgot that she still had them.

But her wall had come crumbling down, as the tears slipped down her cheeks under her helmet. Petra silently walked behind her and they made their way out of the crumbling prison.


End file.
